by Theodore Dreiser
Sister Carrie is one of those novels that you frequently hear mentioned in nineteenth century literary criticism but probably isn't something you would go out of your way to pick up at the library -- one of the lesser "classics" that you might miss because there's so many others to read. If you're n...
So I felt like I hadn't read anything "meaty" in a while and picked this up. I was expecting a turn of the century momralizing tale, dense with rich language and poetic prose. Instead, this is not as straightforward. The novel opens with "When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of tw...
Wtf. Didn't think it could get any worse until the end ruined it. This books has been a slow but constant decline. The style reminded me of a cheap mix of Balzac and James, and the mention of pere goriot in the last chapter gave me a bitter smile.
I can't believe I have to read this again. Maybe I'll like it better this time. UPDATE: Nope, I did not. Don't read this book.
I liked the beginning alot, the middle somewhat, and by the end I had wished it had ended about 100 pages back. The story was good and it was very modern for the time, but I felt it dragged towards the end and I am not particularly fond of narratives that do that.
Published in 1900, this book is credited with having an impact on the course of American literature. Dreiser's sparse style depicts the realities of everyday city life (Chicago and New York) at the turn of the 19th Century in a way that seems to hide nothing. It thus allows the reader to feel that...
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